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The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe.

McCallion, Barry.

East Hampton, NY: 2018. Artist's book, one is a series of three, all on beige Arches BFK paper for the text and grey Arches BFK for the prints, signed and dated by the artist, Barry McCallion, on the colophon. Page size: 9.5(W) x 12(L) inches; 34pp; including titlepage and colophon and 9 original linoleum-cut engravings, each of these with caption from text, numbered and signed all in pencil. Bound by Joelle Leavitt Webber: red paper wrappers with exposed sewing (brown kitchen twine) and housed in custom-made red cloth over boards clamshell box with title on painted paper label on front panel and spine of box, the inside front and back trays of box housing two of the original red linoleum blocks. The text of Poe's Gothic horror tale is handwritten in black India ink. The original linoleum cuts are printed in black and then enhanced by the artist in acrylic inks and paints. The rough texture of the prints, as well as their sharp perspective, increases the three-dimensional aspect of each image. The reader / viewer enters the depraved world of the narrator as almost entering an ever-narrowing room. The frontispiece of a spiral cut-out on black paper showing against the white of the succeeding page (or the red of the front flyleaf) gives a hint of the horror to come: there is no escape for the victim nor for the narrator. The linoleum blocks in this copy are of the 2nd and 3rd prints: "I passed down a long and winding staircase" and "I knocked off the neck of a bottle." "In pace requiescat!" Item #11361